On Wednesday, the Home DOGE subcommittee held a listening to to carry “public” broadcasting accountable for not serving the whole public that helps pay their payments. Beneath a barrage of Republican questions, NPR CEO Katherine Maher admitted it was a “mistake” for NPR to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop computer story, expressed remorse about vicious anti-Trump tweets earlier than she got here to NPR, and agreed it wouid be disturbing if experiences had been true that there have been no Republicans in NPR newsroom.
How a lot protection did this rock’em-sock’em listening to obtain on ABC, CBS, and NBC? Nothing. Zero. Not on the night information. Not on the morning packages the day after.
It’s not just like the broadcast networks weren’t protecting hearings. All of them led their newscasts with “Signalgate,” the Trump administration discussing a navy strike on the Houthis on the personal encrypted app Sign, however letting in leftist journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic. Goldberg is the host of the weekly PBS present “Washington Week with the Atlantic.”
NPR, PBS HONCHOS FACE TENSE GRILLING BY GOP LAWMAKERS OVER BIASED COVERAGE, TAXPAYER FUNDING
Each ABC’s “World News Tonight” and the “NBC Nightly News” ran footage of CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard being grilled by Democrats in a Home listening to about how this breach occurred. “Bombshell text” was the hype from NBC anchor Lester Holt’s opening of the published.
On the “CBS Evening News,” reporter Ed O’Keefe was gunning for resignations: “Well, here at the White House tonight, officials cannot rule out that someone might lose their job over all of this.” He interviewed Goldberg and former Obama Protection Secretary Chuck Hagel to play up the scandal.
O’Keefe ended by noting the bipartisan name from the Senate Armed Companies Committee for a full investigation: “Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman from Mississippi, called it a successful attack on the Houthis but ‘a shame this security question is distracting the public from the success of that mission.’”
It’s a “shame,” all proper. The networks will all the time downplay any Trump success and play up any Trump mistake.
So let’s discover the information from the PBS-NPR listening to they didn’t wish to report:
1. NPR CEO Katharine Maher made a really belated admission to GOP questions on their harsh dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop computer story as a “pure distraction” proper earlier than the 2020 election: “Our current editorial leadership thinks that was a mistake, as do I.” This was breaking information, as a result of nobody heard them admit that prior to now, when their taxpayer money is on the road.
2. Maher confessed that she wouldn’t ship the identical wild tweets she put out calling Trump a “deranged racist sociopath” and saying America was “addicted to white supremacy.” She known as looting “counterproductive,” however it’s “hard to be mad” about property crimes. She claimed she has “evolved” from these views. However these sizzling takes neatly match NPR’s wokeness. They most likely helped her get the gig.
3. Each President and CEO of PBS Paula Kerger and Maher proclaimed towards all of the proof that PBS and NPR information packages are nonpartisan and unbiased. Texas Republican Rep. Pat Fallon cited NewsBusters research, like one which discovered the “News Hour” used 162 labels of “far-right” extremism and solely six makes use of of ‘far left” terms. Another one found PBS coverage of the 2024 party conventions was dramatically biased – the Republican confab drew 72 percent negative coverage, while the Democrat event drew 88 percent positive coverage. Kerger professed she had no idea about these studies. So much for preparing for the hearing.
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4. Several Republicans cited the expose of NPR senior editor Uri Berliner, who found in research on the D.C. voter registrations of NPR newsroom employees that there were 87 Democrats and zero Republicans. Maher replied that would be disturbing if it were true, but in a year on the job, there’s no signal that they’ve employed any Republicans who may have an effect on the every day leftist depth of the NPR “information.” Berliner was not a Republican, and he was forced out.
5. Four Republicans noted Berliner’s finding that Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff was interviewed 25 times on NPR during the Russian-collusion fake news [I’d add here that Wolfson and Rutz found 32, but that’s your call.] Rep. Fallon noted that and asked Maher how many times the Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer, had been interviewed about his Biden impeachment probe. Maher didn’t know. Fallon told her it was zero. There’s a similar lack of attention to Comer from the network Sunday shows.
Hearing bias has been a constant exhibit in broadcast-news bias going back 50 years. They went wall-to-wall for the Democrats on Watergate, Iran-Contra, Anita Hill, and the extremely one-sided House January 6 Committee. Hearings chaired by Republicans are buried as worthless partisan exercises.
PBS and NPR felt compelled to cover this DOGE hearing, but that doesn’t mean they liked it. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik lamented it this way: “The listening to, entitled ‘Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable,’ seems organized extra to attain factors than to search out details.”
The broadcast news networks are easily accused of being more interested in scoring points than finding facts. They typically skip all the facts that ruin their “storytelling” – particularly details about how they skew the information.
